SYMPOIESIS by Erica Dawn Lyle

Guitars and Singing by Erica Dawn Lyle

Recorded and edited at home
from New Moon 1/21/23 to the Full Moon 2/5/23
mix of live improv and composition made from improv loops

Mixed and mastered by Mark Bennett

Thanks to Midnight, Iemanja, Mark, Frank/ie Consent, Period Bomb, Imogen Xtian Smith, SJ, Mitchell Powers, Tobin, Alex Lichtenauer, Earthquaker, Kitty Bauer, Privacy Issues, and the defenders of the Welaunee Forest

SYMPOIESIS
I worked on this record 12 hours a day
from new Moon 1/21/23 to Full Moon 2/5/23
and while I worked on it I thought about
presence, how we talk to each other
how we learn our information
or don't
how I was posting about what the cops were doing in Atlanta Forest
and wasn't sure anymore how to tell anyone about anything
words corrupted like Norfolk Southern rain
total saturation, a pileup of images
the primacy of the visual
(rain, they called it,
and then a film seemed to cover the surface of the Taconic)
how the moral arc of the universe degrades toward jpeg
and the atrophy of all of our other senses
the way words seem to lose their meaning as if from the inside out
the way these triggers are less like emotion
then like a kind of zombie emotion
like the feeling of being dead inside but if the feeling itself was dead inside
and not really the real feeling

If it seems like a detour, I only bring this all up
because I feel convinced
this is where the actual battle is being fought right now:
the battle to be able to insist that specific things have specific meanings
and how does it feel in your body
when you see images of a bulldozer destroying the forest?
where does this feeling live in your body?
And what kind of conception of The Future
has its DNA in The Scroll
at this level of impulse, the level of intention,
between fight and flight
between addiction and trigger
where do you retreat to and who do you surrender control to?
And what do you tell yourself is your ace in the hole?
I want to say I will always be grateful to this record
for how making it helped me for a time to remain present
I experienced the work like a prayer
an effort to neither dissociate or catastrophize
but to be able to sit with the reality of what had happened in the forest
how the Atlanta Police came into a camp in the trees,
murdered a protester who was kneeling on the ground with their hands up in the air to signal surrender
then kept shooting the place up for several hours
before arresting six people more or less at random and charging them with domestic terrorism
friends, I am struggling with this
struggling with
to be present

In Staying With The Trouble,
Donna Haraway uses the term sympoiesis
to mean making with
the idea that no living thing makes itself
that all living things are interdependent
did I make this record with plants?
I always say my music feels like its working best
when it sounds like a field of bugs
or frogs, the peepers, the OG pond scum improvisers
I'm thinking about the dream language of mold
creeping between ecstasy and sleep
The time I did a psychic writing ritual with Iemanja
trying to talk to each other about erosion
with our minds
she was at a swamp in Ohio and I was at the Kinderhook
and that night our conversation continued in my dream
and when I woke up there was no sound, just a feeling in my body
like what mold sounds like to itself
the mycorrhiza, lighting up the Signal threads,
The Secret Life of Plants
Haraway borrowed Sympoiesis from M. Beth Dempster
who coined it originally in 1998:
collectively-producing systems
that do not have self-defined spatial or temporal boundaries
Information and control are distributed among components
The systems are evolutionary and have the potential for surprising change
Thinking of how scientists now believe trees communicate with each other through their root systems
the way the taller, healthier trees send mutual aid
nutrition support to trees with less advantage of height or soil
through a complex symbiotic relationship with funguses
the way healthy forests actually work,
the horizontally organized world
that the forest defenders have attempted to make together
the ways the defenders have felt called to work with the forest,
how they use the denseness and impenetrability of the trees
the forests’ natural inhospitality to the movements of police
to repel invasion, really I'm thinking just how much love there is
that a trans girl gets from trees
and thinking of what the love of a forest makes real
and my own life in pine forests
in FLA not GA, the white sand Florida pine mixed with saw palmetto
on the edges of my suburban childhood
subdivison, where I went to escape
maybe the only place I felt truly myself
my oldest body memories, this dappled light, these whispering pines,
the Florida East Coast train tracks always nearby,
and one memory long repressed, but even older
I was walking in such a place along the tracks,
in the light of the full moon, train roaring by, December 2016
when I remembered that I am a girl,
that I have always been one.
In these originary FLA primeval forests, behind the strip mall
the adults called them, “empty lots”
as if insisting that every inch
of the Florida jungle would one day be tamed by capital
but I've been thinking of these specific places that stubbornly remain Outside
outside of capitalism, People’s Park in Berkeley, of course, 
but there is the ZAD in France, and
I think, too, of the attempted pandemic commune
made by the unhoused residents of Echo Park in LA
Thinking about how much colonizers are threatened by specificity of place
the lengths they will go to suppress
protesters killed in Peoples' Park, in Atlanta
and thinking of Thomas Barnett’s theory of The Non-Integrated Gap 
the proposals to colonize Mars, 
Madagascar and Miami and Mars all operating on the same clock, 
the same structure of feeling, copy/paste
so many of the forest defenders in Atlanta were trans, 
and I am thinking of the link I feel in my body between the freedom found in these slippery places  and the wild interiority of trans, 
unconquered by gender binary, 
the relation of inner and outer space,
it is trans youth and forest defenders who are all so much under attack
in this incipient fascist moment in the USA
But, still, you know what it's like
when you are with people who love each other
and what they have made together? what they have made real?
I remember my show in the Welaunee Forest
Its been six months since I played a show in the Welaunee Forest
It was a crisp Fall night, hundreds of kids dancing,
the breath of the forest in the treetops,
all of us turning our faces up to the sky in wonder,
pine needles twirling down onto us,
I looked around and thought,
Definitely, The Future Is Trans,
I am still finding pine needles in the back of my amp,
my cord bag, turning up in my car, on my altar,
like waking up with something in your hand
you brought back from a dream,
and I'm thinking again of The Secret Life of Plants
I never saw the movie but, the thing is,
when he made the soundtrack to it
Stevie Wonder had, of course, never seen it either
I tam thinking a lot about this graveyard of images we haunt
and Stevie's tremendous effort of translation, of empathy
the director describing the film to him, frame by frame
Stevie, who had never seen a flower or a volcano or the ocean either
the effort of the imagination it took
this brilliant, emotionally sensitive, highly experimental accompaniment
to the images onscreen
and I think that is so much of what seems missing now
the awakening of all of our senses, the intuition
and I humbly aspire to that quality of presence
between fight and flight
between addiction and trigger
as I offer up this record
a soundtrack to a movie that I also have not seen
the movie in which we imagine all the ways that we will take back control of the forests and our lives
and how we will win

Also check out BENEFIT FOR NEFOC, a collaboration with Vice Cooler, featuring guests Kim Gordon, Raincoats, Kathleen Hanna, Brontez Purnell, Linda Lindas, many more! All proceeds to buy land for Black and Indigenous farmers. https://ericadawnlylevicecooler.bandcamp.com/album/land-trust-benefit-for-nefoc